Not Me in the Morning: Mungal with Nitin Sawhney and "Awake"

Today's random tune is called Awake and is by Mungal and Nitin Sawhney. Mungal is an Indian-Trinidadian musician who was born into a musical family and learned instruments, such as the harmonium, dholak and dhantal, from the age of 8. He also played clarinet, taught himself the mandolin, and at twenty-seven, he took up the sitar and practiced secretly for eight years. After revealing himself as a sitar player, he took first prize in a competition. In his 40s, he turned from Indian classical music to Indo-Trinidadian jazz-calypso. He is teamed up on Awake with Nitin Sawhney, a British-Indian musician, producer and composer. Combining Asian and other themes with jazz and electronica, he explores themes of multiculturalism, politics and spirituality. As a child, Sawhney studied piano, classical and flamenco guitar and tabla. After meeting up with acid-jazz keyboardist James Taylor and joining his quartet, he also began working with tabla player Talvin Singh and formed the Tihai Trio. After dropping out of school, Sawhney formed the comedy group The Secret Asians with friend Sanjeev Bhaskar and developed the award winning BBC comedy show Goodness Gracious Me. After, he refocused on music and released his debut album in 1993. He has released nine albums, has contributed scores for stage, screen, television and video games, and has remixed a wide variety of artists including Sting, Jeff Beck and Paul McCartney. Awake can be found on Mungal's album Dreadlocks (2000) and on the 2002 various artists compilation Putumayo Presents: Asian Groove.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: http://www.wrasserecords.com/Mungal_42/biography.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitin_Sawhney;